Manifesto of Fruitfulness | The 100x Life

to honor the Word of God as not just human words, but the very Word of God and our teaching text tonight comes from Luke chapter 8 verses 4 through 15. While a large crowd was gathering and people were coming to Jesus from town after town, he told this parable, a farmer went out to sow his seed as he was scattering the seed some fell along the path, it was trampled on and the birds ate it up. Some fell on rocky ground and when it came up the plants withered because they had no moisture. Other seed fell among thorns which grew up with it and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop a hundred times more than was sown. When he said this he called out, whoever has ears to hear let them hear. His disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables so that those seeing they may not see, though hearing they may not understand. This is the meaning of the parable. The seed is the Word of God. Those along the path are the ones who hear and then the devil comes and takes away the Word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved. Those on the rocky ground are the ones who receive the Word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life's worries, riches, and pleasures, and they do not mature. But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart who hear the Word retain it and by persevering produce a crop. This is the Word of the Lord. Maybe seated. Well, a very good evening to you. It is wonderful to see you tonight.

Appreciate that. Some of you are just coming back. You may not know who I am. I was gone or summer. My name is John. I am the senior pastor here. I was on my first ever sabbatical. I was turning 50 and so I wrote 11,300 miles around America on a Harley-Davidson, which felt like a perfect midlife crisis play. And it was absolutely wonderful, but it is so great to be back in New York. If you are new to our church, I just want you to know you are stepping into a fantastic time. Our church is not just Sunday gatherings. And by the way, hello to everybody in the balconies, both sides full tonight, wonderful to see you up there. We're not just small groups and services as important as though they are. There are remarkable things happening in the heart of our church. This past week, we did citywide prayer. Over 40 churches in New York came together to pray and to ask God to pour His Spirit out on our city. Three new church plants were blessed, prayed over. It's a remarkable thing in the larger kingdom ecosystem to have this much unity and to know that God is bringing other leaders to New York to start churches. You remember creative NYC to the Youth Humanity exhibition. That was phenomenal. But what was special about this, if you were to go up the street and you were to go to the Met, one of the things that would stand out to you is the profound influence that the church and the Christian faith have had on art historically. The church was a patron of the arts. It believed in the arts, it believed in artists and it used its resources to commission and

fund works. What I loved about this past gallery, this was our 50th paid commission to artists here in New York City to make work. So, part of your giving in generosity to our church is you are a micro patron of the arts by giving to what God is doing in our church. And we also, this past Friday night, after we had citywide prayer, a group of people in our church, some of you were here did all night prayer again on Friday night. Once a month, there are people who pray from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. asking for God to pour out His Spirit in our church and in our city. So, I simply want to say, if you're ready to go, where ready to go? We would love to have you lean into all the gods doing here and it's a really, really beautiful season here in New York, but also in our church in particular. So, I'm so glad you're here and I want you to reach the full purpose for which God has brought you to New York. I want you, if you ever leave here or when you leave here to look back and say, this was one of the richest, most fruitful seasons of my life and I believe it's possible. So, I'm glad you're here. Before we lean into this passage tonight, I want to pray this passage, even as you're hearing it might be like hang on I get it, I've heard that before. Well, I just want to say I'm not sure that you do get it. I wouldn't be so sure of your own spiritual insight to be able to analyze it like that because at the time of Jesus, they couldn't figure out what exactly was going on. So this is a really important word, and what I love about the passage we have tonight is that every single one of you, if this is your first time at church in your life, or you've been coming since you were in your mother's womb

to church, dragged along vicariously, I want to say you are in tonight's passage. That's not always true. Sometimes you're reaching for application in the passage to bring other people in, but everybody is in this passage tonight. See if you can find and identify where you are. So let's pray, and then we're going to unpack God's word together. Father, I just want to say thank you for the clarity that we get from your word. Thank you that your word is living in an active. It is not just a historical account of a man in a community from millennia ago. It is the very words of God to speak to our hearts and to bring life and hope and direction here in New York in our hearts tonight. Father, we submit ourselves under your word and I pray for an anointing from your spirit that this word would go forth in power and that in the decades to come there would be 100X fruit because of the invitation tonight. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen. If you've ever wondered why some people just seem to really go on for God, they just, their faith comes together. And over the course of time, they just flourish in their relationship with God. And why other people either drop off or shrink back or struggle with what's going on,

they seem perpetually overwhelmed, tonight is going to explain why that happens. And it's a very simple text, but it's a potent one. Now, the context of this passage, Jesus has been going from village to village and he's been preaching and everywhere he goes, the crowds love him. And so he is building a movement, preaching one place, preaching the next place. More crowds follow him and they love him everywhere he goes. And so Jesus does a little bit of a DTR with the crowd to just let them know he is not interested in massive, passive amounts of large gatherings where people just listen to what he says. He wants them to know that there is a response that he wants from them. And so he gives them this parable to stir up their desire, to hear his word the right way. It's a simple story. Jesus is the sower. He's the one going around sowing. The seed is the word of God. In fact, Jesus teachings about the kingdom of God and the soil is the responsiveness of people's hearts. So there's a couple of things I love that are part of this. First of all, I want to note, Jesus doesn't say there's four kinds of seed. One kind of seed, four responses. You have been given the same opportunity in invitation as every person in history

who has had a copy of this scriptures. There is not a lukewarm invitation from Jesus are like kind of into it, version of Jesus and a wholehearted version. It's the same invitation. Jesus is inviting you to live a life of union with him that bears disproportionate, overflowing, supernatural, provocative fruit in your life around you. And what determines is not the word, it's your responsiveness to that word. So let's look at what Jesus says. Now, by the way, you may be thinking, 'cause sometimes people try and understand why on earth would a good farmer go, "Wow, there's a hard part that will bear no seed." Let me just throw some there or there's a rocky sort. In the land of Israel, particularly where Jesus is preaching in this region, that's not how they did farming. They had a different approach because they didn't have all the modern tools and understanding perhaps the way that we do in the modern world. What they would do is they would just so generously over every corner of their land, then they would till it up, they would plow the entire soil and just trust at some point that there would be a crop. And at times, they were even surprised which parts of it would spring up.

And so they were sowing to try and get every piece of fallow ground to get a maximum harvest of what would happen, generous sowing, plow the whole thing and see what it takes. Jesus says four responses to the word that is sowing, the first one. The first soil, the seed doesn't get into the soil because it's hard. And then the seed is stolen. Look at what it says, verse five, a farmer went to sow his seed. And as he was scattering the seed, some fell on the path. It was tripped on and the birds ate it up. Those along the path are the ones who hear. And then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved. Now, I want to note something here that is often overlooked. In our world today, the idea of the devil, Jesus is gonna make the claim that the reason the first with people do not respond is not just their own hearts, but there is a spiritual battle for the state of your heart. And the cause of much of the chaos and lack of comprehension is going to be the fact that we are in a spiritual war and we have an enemy and Jesus calls that person the devil. Now, in the modern world, we live in a very reductionistic, materialistic world.

A lot of times people will say things like, you know, you can't actually believe that there is like an actual personal being called the devil. I mean, are you kidding me? We live in a scientific world. We live in a world where there's AI, which may be the devil, I do not know. But we live in a world where the naturalistic explanation of what is wrong and the fact that it's just neurochemicals or cultural myths or a psychological projection or struggle seems insufficient for what it is that we're actually facing when it comes to evil. Jesus' assumption is that there is evil in the world. So I would not dismiss this. There is an enemy who wants to keep you from the life that God has for you. Now, there's three main ways that he seeks to take that seed, the first one, the enemy seeks to blind us. So we just can't see what it is that Jesus offers. Second Corinthians 4.4 says this, "The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers." So they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ. Who is the image of God? So he just wants to sort of stop us even comprehending or perceiving the truth and power and joy and freedom of the life that God has for us. He just wants us to be completely gone from our horizon of possibility for our lives.

Second thing is he seeks to trap us. Colossians 2 is a fascinating verse. Paul writing to the Colossian believer says, "See to it that no one takes you captive." Now that is a strong word. Sometimes sociologists will talk about the idea of ideological capture. Like somebody's gotten sucked into a particular philosophy or thought pattern or whatever. He says, "See to it that no one takes you captive "through hollow and deceptive philosophy, "which depends on human tradition "and the elemental spiritual forces of the world "rather than on Christ." And if you look around the world today, you see this happening all the time. People are captured by various understanding of the world and various ideologies. Sometimes it's secular humanism. Sometimes it is projecting what used to be religious onto political systems. Sometimes it's in our university, sort of an aggressive, critical theory that reinterprets our reality through very, very limited perception. A lot of times people call these things thought cults. And I think this is great language because when you think of a cult, you tend to think of a charismatic figure and a group of people gathering him around him.

I have seen people get so caught up in secular thinking that they are just as prone to deception and abuse as anybody who's in any sort of cult. People get caught up in systems they can't free themselves from. And then the enemy seeks to deceive us. Second Corinthians 11, 14 through 15 and no wonder for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light, it's not surprising then if he servants also masquerades as servants of righteousness. Now, because we live in a world that is basically said to an entire generation, this is a closed materialistic world. This is that, you know, we're leaving a generation without spiritual hope. And when you take away hope, people will latch onto anything. Why is manifesting so popular? Here's my take because we live in a world where people feel like I am the victim of gigantic tectonic plates of giant corporations manipulating me through algorithms and markets over which I'm just a tiny little cog in a gigantic machine. I have no real power. I don't want to be pacified and numbed out. So I'm going to try and exert some kind of agency horoscope. If you go to a Christmas party, you meet someone, what are they like, oh, tell me your sign, what's your horoscope, or whatever it's like. My son is, I'm Australian, I don't know what you're talking about, okay? Fortune telling the new age, Buddhism, that so many people are just looking for some kind of spirituality, but the root of it is its spiritual deception and not spiritual truth.

And I think there's another category here that's just worth mentioning that gets a lot of play because of social media. You often get teachers or internet personalities that used to be conservative Christians or followers of Jesus, and then they for whatever reason, sometimes sort of legitimate, sometimes very legitimate, and other times they just get caught up in stuff, they deconstruct their faith. And so they get famous in Christianity, they make money out of Christianity, they change the core beliefs and betray the Christianity as they have experienced and monetized it, and then they get angry and act like a victim of the system they use to get famous in the first place. Now, they know when they leave it, they're going to lose their influence and lose their income, and so they will recruit you out of it so they at least have an audience that they can appeal to. And I just want to say, you've got to be very, very careful of that. The enemy does this through subtle questioning rather than through direct assault. There's always better to sow dissent. So you remember in Genesis 3, he comes to Eve and he says, did God really say the aim is to create suspicion about God's motives and boundaries, to frame his commands as restrictive rather than protective, and to present sin not as rebellion, but as liberation and enlightenment with a promise that apart from God, you can be like God, which was a lie because God had already created them in his image like God. I just want to say this, don't be naive. You're not in a neutral world on your own in an autonomous journey of your authentic self. You are in a heavily coercive, manipulated world. You are in the middle of a war. You have an enemy, and you've got to be aware of what is happening. Jesus says the gospel goes out because of the hardness of heart. The enemy comes and steals the possibility of a life with God, and it's God. That's the first response, the second response. The second soil, he calls this the shallow soil, verse 6, some fell on rocky ground, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture, verse 13, those on the rocky ground are the ones who receive the word with joy while they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing, they fall away. Now, rocky soil, it's not like they have huge rocks in the middle of the fields, and they say, which just in case, and they throw the seed on it, anticipating it's going to work. The first thing they're going to do is clear the field, but in Israel, there's these areas where there's lime ledges underneath, and they can't quite see them from the surface, and so the water gets trapped above the limestone, and it actually creates the perfect conditions for fast growth,

but the worst conditions for long-term growth, almost like a little greenhouse where it's hotter because of the sun and the water's right there, and so things germinate quickly. And so Jesus is talking about these seeds that when they hear it, they're excited at first. Everything is primed in their life in order for them to receive the word for joy, but because they have no root, they ultimately fall away. And I think what ends up happening a lot of times is that people can get into a place where they experience some sort of life crisis. Perhaps they have a meaning void, they put their trust in their career, or they break up from a long-term relationship, or they move to the city, and things don't go as they want. Total crisis of meaning, someone comes along and said, "God is really meaningful," and they're like, "Great, I need meaning," and they jump into it. Or maybe they're really lonely, and they go to an event, and they're like, "Oh my gosh, Christians are commanded to love one another, and I need to be loved," and this feels like a fantastic combination of them living my faith, and my needs being met. And they come in, and it's remarkable. And so as a result of what ends up happening, they get the sociology of the gospel, but they don't get the person who makes all of this possible, which is Jesus. And so it says they don't get their roots down into the actual message, or into union with Christ, and this little phrase here in the time of testing. Matthew 1321 says, "When trouble or persecution comes, because..." Anyone? That was not reciprocal. So abiding, yeah. Beautiful passage. John 15, remain in my love. I want to just give you the next verses from John 15 from last week, okay? If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belong to the world, it would love you as its own as it is. You do not belong to the world, but I've chosen you out of the world. That's why the world hates you. Remember what I told you, a servant's not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too. So here's the context. Jesus says, I need you to remain in my love because the world is going to freaking hate you. And if you do not have the source of my love, you will collapse under the hatred of the world. So abiding, it's not this neutral Sabbath candle, lightet, colored journal, quiet reflection thing, just so you can have inner peace. It is a source of power to handle the rejection that the world will bring when they understand the truth of what the gospel actually teaches. The message of Jesus is good news. It goes with the grain of reality as God has created things. But it's a confrontive word. I want to be clear here. Sometimes we try and do PR for Jesus. We're so worried about

making sure that people realize Jesus is loving. We never present the rest of him. And as a result, when people find out what the gospel is, what Jesus really teaches, they can't figure out how to live it all out. They have identity foreclosure. They never get a secure identity in Christ because what they believe is never properly tested. Can we just have a moment of honesty here? As a pastor whose job it is to preach God's word, I just want to remind you of some of the things the church has taught and believed for 2000 years as a part of the great tradition. Here's one thing. If it's controversial in the world today, Jesus makes the claim that he is the only way to God. You will not get to heaven apart from a relationship with Christ and trusting that he has died for your sins. You will not go to heaven if you're a Muslim or a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness or you're a Buddhist or you're just trying to be a good person. By the way, if that sounds offensive, Mormons don't think you're going to get to our celestial realm. Jehovah's Witnesses don't think you're going to live on the new earth. And Muslims certainly don't believe that you're going to be with Allah in paradise. Everybody teaches exclusive truth claims. I just want you to know that Jesus teaches his and I am very compelled by it. But you've got to realize it's not, "Hey, you do you and I do me and I'll see you there." Jesus says, "I am the way." Jesus cares about your sexual ethics. Jesus ties sexuality into creation. In Matthew 19, when he's asked about it, he says, "Have you not heard from the beginning the Creator made them male and female? Your body is not a blank slate for personal expression." The Bible says, "You were not your own. You were bought with the price. Therefore, honor God with your body and do not defile the temple of the Holy Spirit." Sexuality is central, not incidental to your spiritual formation. Jesus cares who you sleep with. Jesus taught about hell more than anybody in the Bible. And he did this out of love. Now, you've heard me say this before, but to note, Jesus didn't yell at sinners. He told his disciples about hell to motivate them to share the good news out of love. So when someone's in Times Square telling New York, you're going to burn. I'm like, the message is like probably not quite directed the way Christ would direct it. But I think the message itself is a true message. If there are consequences for your life decisions, if you post a bat, if you can be canceled on social media for a post, you can be canceled for your sin. Enemy love and forgiveness. Everybody says all religions have a version of the golden rule. Christianity does not teach the golden rule. It teaches the platinum rule. It says, "Forgive

others as I have forgiven you." And it says, "Love your enemies and do good to them." And a lot of times people in a culture of vengeance do not want to love their enemies. Sometimes people experience suffering and they have a naive view that the only two forces on earth are their will and God's will so that everything that happens is a direct expression of God's hand in their life. They don't take into account human freedom. They don't take into account spiritual warfare. So when bad things happen, they're like, what is the point? The simple point I'm trying to make here we have an obligation to preach the whole gospel to people. And so, again, I think it is important for the church to be as honest about what the gospel is and the seed we're offering, as Jesus was. Look at what Jesus says in Luke chapter nine, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, "take up their cross daily and follow me. "Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, "but whoever loses their life for me will save it. "What good is it for someone to gain the whole world "and yet lose or forfeit their very self? "Whoever's ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man." Listen, listen, whoever is ashamed of me because of HR policies, or what friends say online, and my words, my teachings, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the Holy Angels. John chapter six, Jesus has a teaching about, they have to eat his flesh and drink his blood. On hearing this, many of the disciples say, "This is a hard teaching. "Who can accept it?" And Jesus is like, actually, you're right,

let me just lower that down. No, he says, "Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, "Jesus said to them, does this offend you? "Then what if the Son of Man, "but what if you see the Son of Man ascending where he was "before, the Spirit gives life, the flesh counts for nothing, "the words I've spoken to you, "they are full of the Spirit and life." And he went on to say, "This is why I told you no one "can come to me unless the Father has enabled them." And it says from this time on, "Many disciples turn back and no longer followed him." And you know what Jesus does? He goes to the apostles and he's like, "Do you fellas need a bow or two?" This is a hard teaching and I'm not watering this down. And Peter's like, "Come on, man. "You've got the words of eternal life. "Why are you gonna do me like this?" He doesn't, he feels the pressure of the weight of the claims of Jesus. Now, I want you to, I'm gonna belabor this point for a minute because I think we never touch on it, okay? The Bible speaks in the strongest terms possible about falling away. It is one of the most serious things. We are so casual about the state of our souls. Yeah, man, I think they've bailed on church or whatever. We should weep over that.

That should grieve us. That should keep us up at night. Look at what it says. Second Peter too, now mind you, this is Peter who's like cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. Look what Peter says. If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them, not to have known the way of righteousness than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed to them. Of them, the proverbs are true. A dog returned to its vomit and a so that his wash returns to her wallowing in the mud. That's a heart, you're better off to never know than to know and shrink back. And then it only gets more intense. Hebrews two says this, we must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard so that we do not drift away. For since the message spoken through the angels was binding and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? It goes on in Hebrews three.

See to it, brothers and sisters that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily as long as it is called today so that none of you may be hardened by sins deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original convictions firmly to the end. Hebrews six, this is such a wild passage, Hebrews six, that it seems to be teaching not once saved, always saved, but once lost, always lost. Just listen to this passage before you freak out. It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the coming age, and who have fallen away to be brought back to repentance, to their loss, they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public. all acknowledge it is a serious thing to fall away and it is not a light thing at all. That's why I'm not a just personally, I'm just, I don't love a quick baptism. A lot of times I met a guy once when there was a church and everyone was just getting baptized. I'm not moralizing this for other people. I'm just telling you my personal pastoral convictions. I think we often create environments and we set people up to deny their baptismal vows by baptizing them too quickly. Some of them don't even understand the gospel. I met a guy that said I got baptized because I always wanted one of those t-shirts and they told me you got the t-shirt and you got baptized so I got baptized so I can get the t-shirt. I was like where is the filters? Where is the filters of what's happening here? One

of the most important things we should cheer is not just that people got baptized. We should be asking where are they a year later and are they still with Christ and what can I do to nurture their public conviction and faith in Jesus. Very easy to create an emotional moment where everybody wants to come forward. There's a memetic desire. You see people you love and respect doing it. You want to do it? It is possible to have the sociology of the Christian faith without the covenant union with Christ. Again, as we launch Alpha, I love Alpha. This is probably our bazillionth time running Alpha in our church. We baptize someone from Alpha this morning. It's beautiful but listen, we've got to realize ultimately we're not just inviting lonely people to a free meal so they can feel connection. We're inviting them to the bread of heaven and the wine of eternal life to meet Christ. We've got to be careful that we don't just offer hospitality as a substitute for the beauty of the gospel of Jesus. You get it. You get it. I want to say, if you're half-hearted right now, maybe you started dating someone. You know you shouldn't be. You come to New York and they are dragging you away from your confession. Let them go. Maybe you're just binging late night stuff and it is just poisoning your heart and I just want to say you will reap what you sow into your spirit. It is a serious thing, not fear-mongering, but the tragedy of missing out on a 100x life that Jesus offers. Are you the second soil tonight? Verse 3, the third soil, strangled. Verse 7 are the seed fella-mong thorns which grew up with it and choked the plants. Verse 14, the seed that fella-mong thorns stands for those who hear but as they go in their way they are choked by life's worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. Scholar Dara Bock tells us that the weeds at the time of Jesus could say, "I'm six feet tall." At some time they would grow six feet tall. And so where you're anticipating seeing a harvest you've got these giant weeds and what they do is they take away the necessary resources. Often weeds grow rapidly. They boast shorter germination times than the ginormous crops so they out-compete the desirable plants for moisture, essential macronutrients. They have a wider root network so they are able to take more of the water and some of them highly invasive species in particular do a kind of biochemical warfare in the soil called allylopathy. I live in Midtown Manhattan. I don't have a lot of experience with soil, okay, but so forgive me for not being more fluent on allylopathy, but anyway basically what they do is they send phytotoxins into

the soil to poison the soil so the good crops can't even draw nutrients when they get it. That's what ends up happening in our lives when we let worries, the desire for wealth, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desire for other things to choke out the work of God in our lives. I grew up in Australia and Australia is, tend to be Australian instead to be very easygoing. The classic phrase, "No worries." I have friendship and no drama. That's what I'm talking about. I want to tell you as I've gotten older, I don't say no worries mate a lot. I say I have many worries mate. My life is so complicated. I'm getting sandwiched. My parents are in their 80s. My in-laws are 80. Both of them have health problems on both sides. I got all the drama from the generation upon me drawing from me. Below me I've got two Gen Z children, 26, 23. Love you Gen Z. I'm your dad. I mean it's like it's like I'm trying to, I'm drinking blank street with my daughter. I'm doing what I can here. I got the pressures of like generation gaps. I bought an apartment last year. It took me 20 years. I bought an apartment 478 square feet of glory. People talk about groups where they've been hurt by the church. Is there a support group by people who've been hurt by co-op boards? Is it like a support group like people think the church is traumatic? Go get you an interview to get in a co-op man. I got worries. I simply say that if I'm not careful as a professional Christian, I got stuff coming at me. The first thing that goes is Jesus. Now because my last point was pretty heavy, I want to just show you a light of hearted clip. Tell me if you can relate with this. Breaking news, I figured it out. I solved all of my life problems. All I had to do was eat healthy, workout, get plenty of sleep, have a decent paying job, be surrounded by family, have supportive friends, be in a healthy romantic relationship, drive a working car, have fantastic work-life balance, have all of my bills paid, go to therapy, have high-speed internet access, build up my savings, have a solid retirement plan, get a bi-weekly massage, get all of my chores done in the house, keep all of my electronic devices charged, pay off my student debt, do the horizontal tango on a consistent basis, catch up with my favorite TV shows, manage my ADHD, my OCD and my anxiety and my depression, feed my pets, transfer my laundry to the watchers to the dryer, easily get out of bed in the morning, not be bothered by things I can't control, constantly take the high road, remember where I put my keys, respond to all the texts and emails I've been avoiding, respond to all the text and emails I

forgot about, receive love and affection, be happy with the way that I look in the mirror, not doom scroll on social media, remember to put gas in my car, save my money instead of impulsively purchasing things like door dash or vacation packages, have my favorite sports team win the championship, successfully eat one Pringle instead of the whole container in one sitting, remember to take my meds, live in the home that I've always wanted to live in, never hit traffic ever, beat debt free, vacation in all of my favorite places around the world, floss my teeth, make my bed, mop the floor, take the trash out and do the one thing I've been putting off for months that would only take me 30 seconds to complete, that's it, that's all, that's all you have to do and if you do that those few things, life is amazing. Honestly it's, we feel that, some of you like I could have made that video, so many things just creep into our lives and before we know it there's no margin to cultivate a life we've gone and I'll listen, I want to tell you this, there is a true conspiracy in our society and I know everybody says that about every conspiracy that's not true, but one of the truest things is our society exists to manufacture anxiety because they know an anxious people are a manipulative people and an anxious people will buy products to alleviate their anxiety. Now I know there is such a thing as genuine, severe anxiety that requires profound care, I'm not talking lightly about that, I understand that journey, I'm just talking about a world the entire time that makes you feel like you're not good enough, wealthy enough, well educated enough, beautiful enough, having a good enough life and the pressure is on you to get all of eternity crammed into the next four years here in New York and I'm just saying if you make, if you let the spirit of anxiety of our wage become the operating system of your heart, it will squeeze out the life that Jesus has for you. Jesus goes on and says that a desire for riches. Now obviously the Bible is not anti-money, it's pro-st stewardship, Jesus was not a wandering hippie traveling around without a place to live, Jesus was funded by wealthy women, it was gospel pastrons that made Jesus ministry possible, but it is possible to love money the wrong way and the spirit of Mammon gets in your heart and it destroys your life and you know that the global headquarters of Mammon is in New York City. 1 Timothy 6, 9 through 10 says this, those who want to get rich, fallen to temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires you want to get baptized in ruin and destruction? Ask Mammon to be your Lord and Savior and invite it into your heart. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Some people eager for money have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. And then Jesus says,

just a desire for pleasure. Matthew's gospel says, the desire for other things will choke out your life with God and you will not reach your redemptive potential. Now, what's interesting here is that this is not some giant, satanic attack on you. Again, it's subtle. Dayorath Lewis in his commentary on the gospel and Luke says this, the scary item here is the Greek participle as they go along. The worries, riches and pleasures don't make a sudden assault. Rather, over a period of time they simply ooze their way in. The choking is only the last fate to step. Gradual danger is hard to notice. You remember in Luke 14, just a couple of chapters from here, Jesus is going to give His famous parable of the banquet and He's going to say, "Hey, the banquet's all ready. Go and invite everybody to come in." And then do you remember the responses people come back and say, "Oh, look, I'm a newlywed. You know what I mean? Just working it all out. I can't come to your banquet." And someone else says, "Look, I just brought a place outside the city. I've got to go there on weekends. I'm dying." And so I just got to go beyond my land. And another person says, "I've just brought five oxen. I need to go see him." Like, "Great." And none of them show up. I want you to note it is relationships and second homes and investments in cattle and other things that rob people of the beast of the kingdom of heaven. It's not like a wild old nighter out of a raving green point or what an insert cool area, okay? It's not that. It's the small, normal, subtle things that displace your relationship with Christ and leave you, only offering Him the crumbs of your affection and your attention. Henry Nallen, I read this book by Henry Nallen on leadership this week. It was so amazing. And he simply said this, "The goal of a pastor is to hold forth the first love of God as the source of life." One John 4, 19, "We love Him because He first loved us." That is the first love. He says, "But because we struggle to believe that's true, we take broken versions of a second love. We try and love things to get that first love need met, and it will always disappoint us. Everybody has what potilik calls an ultimate concern, the thing they love the most. And if you love the wrong thing the wrong way, it will break your heart." That's the danger of the third seed. Is that you? As I'm speaking, do you sense the Holy Spirit saying that relationship has taken up space that belongs to me? You're obsession with work and your attempt to rise. I know you want to please me, but we're not in there. You want to please me. We're in there. You want this for your self stage. This is poisoning your heart. Do you sense God saying, "Let me pull that out, not because I want to punish you or judge you because I want to free that up because I have better things for you." Listen, don't miss this. I can't imagine what would have happened

if the rich young ruler actually understood what Jesus was saying to him. Jesus comes to the rich young ruler and he says to him, "Hey, listen mate, you've got a lot going for you. You're rich, you're young, and you're a ruler." That's like the trinity of first century Judaism. He's got it. And so Jesus says this. He goes, "Go sell what you've got and your reward in heaven will be great and come follow me." Jesus was saying, "Look, man, you've got this small portfolio. I appreciate that. But if you want a gigantic eternal treasure in heaven and if you want a life of adventure right now, get rid of that stuff that's in the way, upgrade your vision and your inheritance, and come live a life of mind-boggling apostolic adventure in my kingdom." And he's like, nah. He couldn't see what was being offered to him. Choked out, too important, taking the place that God used to take, no fruit. Have you ever seen someone just choking in a restaurant? Has anyone Listen, you're not in New York until you've hind licked someone or been in the presence of a hind licked in a bagel shop and telling you right now. People who choke are not doing long-term planning. The person is not literally going, "I wonder how I'm going next summer on vacation." He is fighting for the next breath. Here's how you know your life's being choked out. You can't think beyond today. Your soul is in survival mode. You have no margin to dream the dream of God for your life because you're drowning in the now. Lastly, seed 4, the beauty of a 100x life. Verse 8, "Still, are the seed fell on good soil? It came up yielded to crop, still hundred times more than what was sown." He says, "The seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop." I came across this concept, and I love this because this to me is like a modern descriptor of what a 100x heart is like, okay? I come from David Brooks. David Brooks talks about the idea of the ruling passion of your soul. He says, "The way to really tell what drives a person is not their education, it's not

where they work. It's not their hobbies or sports preferences. It is ask someone, what is the ruling passion of your soul?" He says, "The ruling passion of the soul is the central love, duty, or purpose that organizes a person's energy, character, and commitment." Did you get that? I repeat, it is a love-based, organizing principle of our energy, character, and commitments. Ask yourself, if you could turn to your neighbor, if you could go out with someone after this and they said, "What is the ruling passion of your soul? What is it that determines your energy, your spending, your time allocation, what you dream about when nobody else is around, your long-term planning and thinking? Tell me the ruling passion of your soul. Everybody has one. And here's the people who live the 100x life. They're like Jesus and the kingdom of God. These are the organizing principle of my life. This is the ruling passion of my soul. But listen, everybody has a different call. I don't want you to leave New York and go be a monk, okay? I want you to be right here serving Jesus in whatever industry he's got you, okay? You've got to bear fruit based on your gifts, the season of your life, and the time when you're in. But here's what I've noticed over the years. If you study the lives of people who have disproportionately fruitful lives, they may have different preferences, different ages, different styles, different vibes. You get below. You get below all of the activity and you ask them, what is the ruling passion of your soul? And they will say, Jesus is the kingdom of God. The fruit will manifest in different ways, same ruling passion.

Zinsendorf said this, leader of the Moravians, I have but one passion, it is he, it is he alone. Sarah Edwards, the wife of the great theologian, Jonathan Edwards says, I felt a great thirst for the absolute, unreserved, and entire devotion of myself to God. The Virgin said, if Christ is not old to you, he is nothing to you. He will never go halves with anyone, nor will he accept a divided heart. Hannah Widdle Smith says this, to be entirely surrendered to God is the most joyful and peaceful and thrilling experience of the soul. The apostle Paul will say, whatever was gained to me, it's lost, it's rubbish compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, kick a God called this, to will one thing, let me ask you, what's the ruling passion of your soul? If we get behind all of your activity and everything you are doing, what are you burned for? And the ones who have fruitful lives are the ones who have responded to the first love and they say, you can have my love back. Jesus is going to call this the pearl of great price, he's going to call this the treasure in the field and I want you to know, it says, with great joy, he sold all he had and bought the field with the treasure. You get it. No, I don't know about you, I'm almost done to you, I know it's just terribly hot for September, but I want to say this, if that life is possible, that God can give you a ruling passion of your soul that makes you a disproportionately joyful and fruitful Christian, how do we get it? Three very surprising things, number one, ready? Ready? Are you ready in the balcony? [BLANK_AUDIO] There's a few moments in the ministry of Jesus where he yells something. John 7 says of the last and greatest days of the feet, Jesus stood up in a loud voice. He said, "If anyone is thirsty, come to me and drink." And in this passage, he says, when he said this,

he called out, "Whoever has ears, let them hear." He's disciples asking like, "What does this mean?" And Jesus wants them to know this is not just, this is not mental ascent to doctrine. This is the wholehearted response of the affirmation that what you're saying will be what I do. Do you remember, Deuteronomy chapter 6, the shema of the central claim of the Jewish community? Does anyone remember how it starts? How does it start? Here, oh Israel, the Lord is one. For the Jewish community, they still say this every day. Here, behold, in the ancient Near East, where all these pagan nations and deities are yelling at you what to believe, hear the divine voice of God, you are his people. And in the middle of New York City with 10,000 people trying to get your attention and recruit your affections and give you a vision for your life, Jesus says, "Here the invitation of union with me for a fruitful life the world cannot give you." Jesus' voice can be drowned out. The spirit can be grieved. His fire can be quenched. Hear what God is saying. You got to understand. Next, you got to retain it. What happens to you, you must keep over time. Jesus said those with a noble and good heart who hear the word, they retain it. And by persevering, they produce a crop. They get something in their spirit, like James 1 says, the Word of God is planted in them. And they say this thing is going to have space and time and energy and attention and affection. I'm going to cultivate my imagination. I'm going to dream about my future and I'm going to plan it. I'm going to invite the Holy Spirit to take this and build something out of my life. I'm going to have a vision of serving in the church, in the ministry, and in the world with the mission. I have a vision of loving, giving and non-profits, leading people to Jesus, becoming someone who loves his enemies, healing the generational brokenness in my family. I'm going to be a person like that and they give it space and God does it. You got to retain it. I'm amazed at how quickly people forget the insights and revelations that God give them. They create space for it. Listen, I love this. Fruit is never a matter of an overnight exercise. It takes nurturing. Thus, Jesus' teaching does not look at the reaction to God's word in a single moment, but over a period of time, which may be why the planning analogy you use. It takes time to bear fruit, just as it takes time for weeds to choke the seed or for the lack of root in a plant to become evident. Jesus' point deals how a response to the word is the product of the process over time. And the difference between someone who has space and margin and a ruling passion of their soul around Jesus, the kingdom of God, and a busy, distracted New Yorker like everybody else,

is the difference between someone in the process of slowly burning out and somebody living the book of Acts in New York City. And in older terms on whether or not there's margin. I want to just show you a video here. It's a very short video, but it's someone in our church who's living a 100x life, and I want you to notice how miraculous the story is and how the whole thing is just based on hearing what God says on obeying. Go ahead and take a look at this. My name is Caitlyn and I'm based on the Upper East Side. I started following Jesus when I was 14. I grew up in a Christian home and just really encountered Jesus at this camp that I grew up going to, and then followed him for a period of time. And after just a lot of pain in my life, walked away from him for a number of years, and it was actually an encounter in this church that brought me back to the Lord last summer in July. I sat on this bench a little over a year ago and thought about taking my own life during one of the worst seasons of life that I had had, and since coming back to the Lord had walked past this bench, had sat on this bench. So one night I was running past here, it was late at night, and just kind of out of nowhere I got this hamstring pain and I just had this and I didn't really know what it was. So as I was walking past this bench and there was a girl sitting in this exact spot and it was like there was this spotlight on her. All of a sudden and in that moment I just felt like the Lord was like you should go up to her and ask if there's anything that she needs proof for. But I was afraid and it was late at night so I kept walking and I ignored that voice and got probably about 10 yards away and just like felt like the Holy Spirit stops me in my tracks. And then I walked up to the bench and she takes off her headphones, slides out of the way and is like do you want to sit down? And we go on to have this conversation

where she doesn't share very much but is open to being prayed for. So I end up praying for her and I feel led to pray for a few specific things. And then I just felt prompted to share her my story with her because that I had struggled with suicidal thoughts from the time that I was 11 and that Jesus had sent me free from those thoughts about a year prior. And I shared this with her and she's just like oh my goodness, if you could just only know what happened prior to you walking up to me on this bench and then went on to share that she was sitting here thinking about taking her own life. When the Lord had stopped me to come up and share this part of my story with her. And I just felt prompted to say like, I think Jesus wants to set you free from a spirit of death tonight. And she said, oh, he already did. Well, you were praying for me. I like literally felt something lift off me. - Listen, here's my simple point. This city is full of people asking, God, are you real? Give me a sign. Have someone come and talk to me. If we're full of ourselves,

we won't be full of the voice of God. If we're choked out and we have no margin, we'll think I can't, I don't have the margin to stop and do that. I wonder what could happen in your life if you created space for the spirit of God to use you in your, you could be living the book of Acts if you simply make yourself available in our time. So here's the invitation. You want that? Just say Jesus, here's my life then, I receive. Here's my life, I clear everything out. Go deep. Hold on to it, don't let anybody steal it. Refuse to let something choke it out. If you got weeds, rip them out tonight and simply say, Lord, I'm giving you the soil of my heart. Be the ruling passion of my soul and do whatever you want in me. I really do believe tonight that God wants to sow a seed into your life that could possibly change your destiny. And I don't say that lightly. I believe it, there is an offer tonight from God for you to live a life of fruitfulness and see a harvest that seems extraordinary and impossible. And it's not you doing it is receiving and responding to God's love. When I was 17 years old,

I went to a youth group at a Pentecostal church. I heard this passage preached. And I remember saying to myself, hang on a sec, I started working as a butcher when I was 14, okay? I dropped out of high school when I was 16. I'm in one of the nastiest neighborhoods of Australia called Elizabeth South in Adelaide. And the horizon of possibility for me was like, not great. And I remember as a teenager just going, hang on a sec, if Jesus can take fishermen that nobody else wanted and turn them into apostles that shape history, maybe if I just give him my life, he could do something with my life. So I made a covenant with God at 17. I want 100 X Jesus, if you say this is possible, whatever there is of my life, I want to be good soil. JT, good soil, God, please, that's how I want you to see me. And I just want to say, I don't know what I'm doing here in New York preaching to you tonight. I don't know how I got to America. I don't know why my beautiful wife said yes and has stuck with me for 28 years. I don't know why my life's turning. There's no explanation for my life. Other than God saying, Tyson is not the best I have. He's not the most intelligent. He certainly doesn't have the best people skills, but I guess he'll just say yes if I ask. And it is the kindness of God.

And I genuinely believe this, that God wants to give you an invitation tonight where you are sowing the seeds of your destiny in response to him. What do you want to be like when you're 30 or 50 or 60 or 70? Do you want to die in your grave with a shriveled soul and a fruitless life riddled with regret because you turned Jesus down for lesser things that will not matter at the end of your life or in eternity? Or do you want to be sitting with the fruit of people coming up saying thank you, man. I'm going to heaven because of you. Thank you for your generosity. I don't know about you, I'm saying make me good soil, God. Make me good soil. Is there anybody here that wants to be good soil? Is there anybody here that just wants to absolutely renounce the spirit of Satan who wants to steal and kill and destroy and rob you of your inheritance? Is there anybody that says I'm putting roots down, I'm not going to be shallow, I'm not just going to take the benefits of the gospel without the cost of discipleship. I'm going all in with Jesus. Is there anybody getting choked out, you're going to rip the roots out tonight and you're going to say, you know what, the only roots that are going to be in the soil of my life are the roots of the love of God. Is there anybody that says I want stories like Caitlin's story, I'm sick of the boring state of my faith, I'm sick of boring devotions, unanswered prayers, no one meeting Jesus because of me and just working like a robot like everybody else, I want different soil. So if you want that, just say to Jesus tonight, make me good soil, let's just say that in

your heart to the Lord right now, just say, Lord, make me good soil from this point on. God, I'm going to be a good soil. You don't stir this up. This is not just a little pep talk at the end of the teaching, it's just unreservedly saying, Jesus, be the ruling passion of my heart and if you offer your heart to him, he will take it and he will heal it and he will fill you and he will empower you and he will give you fruit that you never thought possible. Why not commit to that tonight? So I want you to invite you to bow your heads just before the Lord and just give you space to say that, give you space to respond to the Lord like that. God of prayer, make me good soil, Jesus weed out anything that is not pleasing to you. If the Holy Spirit has convicted you of anything that's become too important, careers become too important, other people's opinions become too important. Maybe you're in an unhealthy relationship or that guy and girl is making God like demands on you and it's robbing you of space for Jesus, in faith, prune it all away, Lord. Help me to bear good fruit. So Father, I just want to say thank you for your sons and daughters tonight. Lord, I do believe tonight is a night of destiny for some people. Lord, I sense people's futures hanging in the balance tonight, they're going to go one way or the other. Maybe Lord, there's some rich young rulers tonight and they're going to shrink back and manage a little earthly portfolio instead of rising up and giving everything they have to follow Jesus. Lord, I just pray tonight that rich young rulers will become like Zacchaeus who said you can have it all Jesus and he became an amazing evangelist that changed this city. Lord, I just pray, do what only you can do, make us good soil and I pray for a 100x harvest of the gospel in New York. Lord, I just pray people finding freedom, people finding hope. Lord, I pray people being set free from oppression, loneliness, heartache and addiction because of the mercy and power of Jesus.

Thank you Lord for the call and possibility that is available to us in Jesus. That's in His name we pray.